Minnesota's U.S. attorney elaborates on statewide tour

U.S. Attorney Andy Luger (center) meets with a room full of area attorneys and law enforcement officials Tuesday afternoon at the Stearns County Administration Building.
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Kimm Anderson, kanderson@stcloudtimes.com
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Times reporter David Unze interviewed U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger during Luger's visit Tuesday to St. Cloud. Here are some of the questions and answers from that interview.

Tell me about why you are visiting St. Cloud.

"I'm here to listen, and I'm also here to explain a number of my priorities as U.S. Attorney but mostly to talk about how federal prosecutors and county prosecutors and federal law enforcement and state and local law enforcement can and should work well together. That's an important part of what I'm trying to talk about around the state because law enforcement works best when we all work together, and the same thing goes for prosecutors."

You reorganized your office and have new leadership in the narcotics and major crimes units and have formed a special crimes unit. What types of cases might the special crimes unit prosecute?

"It's something that we had when I was in New York that I liked and it kind of focuses on the long-term, complex investigations. Often those investigations might cross over different types of crimes and different types of agencies. For example, some of the trafficking we are seeing might also involve money laundering. It also involves drugs. It also involves other kinds of violence. So, where there is a gang, for lack of a better term, involved in trafficking and also involved in hiding their money and perhaps in other types of violence, we might take that into the special prosecutions unit. They have a broad array of resources that they can bring to bear."

Discuss your initiatives with regard to identity theft and fraud.

"Identity theft is obviously something we didn't work on in the '80s and '90s that is a big part of what we are doing now. It is a larger problem, in my view, than people realize. It's not one person here, one person there. That happens, of course. But often when somebody's identity is stolen, when their bank account is used, their credit cards are used, it is part of a larger operation. So we're actually seeing organized criminal activity involved in identity theft. The office, in coordination with state and local law enforcement has handled large cases of organized identity theft, and we're looking at more."

Combating heroin is another of your stated priorities. Describe what that initiative is about.

"We're thankful that it hasn't been as big a problem in this region of the state as maybe it has been elsewhere. One of my messages today is 'Let's not let it get there.' Let's work together upstream from the heroin problem, which goes to the prescription drug abuse with people getting hooked on pills and then needing to turn to heroin.

It's a message for parents. It's a message for kids. It's a message for health care providers. Let me give you one example that I learned about ... . If you have someone in hospice care at home ... what we've learned is that people who are looking to distribute pills, they learn about someone who passed away in hospice in a home and they either go pay the hospice workers to collect all the pills or they go in themselves or they go into the garbage the next day looking for the pills. It's just one example of how easily this problem can spread and how preventable it is."

The perception of your predecessor is that there were some cases that his office wouldn't take involving firearms and drugs. How do you answer those questions when they come up?

"Every U.S. Attorney, every county attorney, every sheriff, every police chief who takes office has their own set of priorities, looks at the problems they are seeing around their jurisdiction and sets priorities accordingly. When I took office, and before I took office, I spent time listening to law enforcement, listening to county attorneys and it informed me and helped me set my priorities. So, the drug problem in Minnesota, particularly with heroin, but also with methamphetamine and cocaine, is a priority of mine, which means we're going to be very aggressive in taking on cases that local law enforcement and prosecutors refer to us or call us about and the same thing is true about gun violence. Again, everybody sets their priorities. If there is somebody in a community, if there's a group in a community, a gang or a loosely affiliated group that is wreaking havoc in St. Cloud or in Moorhead, anywhere, and we get a phone call that these folks have weapons and they're illegal weapons and they are wreaking havoc. Maybe they don't meet some guideline set at some point in time by our office, (but) we're going to take a good long look at taking those cases."

Define human trafficking and describe how much of it is going on in Central Minnesota.

"The second question, we don't know yet. We're trying to find out because it's a very tough crime to investigate. The reason it's a tough crime to investigate goes to the definition. Trafficking means essentially a form of human slavery, a form of modern-day slavery. The classic example, and it's heartbreaking, is a 12-, 13-, 14-year-old who is disenchanted for a whole host of reasons and spends some time at the mall, meets a guy who is nice to her, buys her things and sort of woos her into a life that she thinks is going to be much better than the life she had at home. That's the recruitment phase. What happens next in a classic trafficking case is he then 'breaks her.' Once he's got her and she's away from home and she has no way to communicate with people she knows, he then breaks her with drugs, with violence, with rape to get her to do what he wants and that's phase two. Phase three is he then traffics her. Then he makes money off of her and she's held prisoner and she has very few ways to escape. That's a classic human trafficking case that we're looking at. It's much, much different than if somebody has some glorified notion about Julie Roberts in 'Pretty Woman' or something like that. This is not that. This is violent, this is controlling and it's destructive."

Is there anything Minnesota does differently to combat human trafficking because we have an international border with Canada?

"Borders are different now than they used to be. Having an international airport gives us a border that is different from the border with Canada. And so if people are going to come into Minnesota, either for labor trafficking or sex trafficking, and they are going to be brought in, they are often going to be brought in through an airport or they are going to be brought in on vans from coming up from different parts of the country. So having a border means we have to be more vigilant, we've got be careful as to people coming across the border with Canada. But frankly a lot of the work goes on at the airport."